


you're a beauty, a luminary in my face

by rosary



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Attempt #218, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Slow Burn, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-02 02:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16296878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosary/pseuds/rosary
Summary: If she’d been forced to guess who her soulmate would be, she’d have said “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, or some guy who kind of looks like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. This, though? She can work with this.As it turns out, meeting Tahani Al-Jamil was the moment Eleanor’s afterlife went straight to hell.





	1. Chapter 1

“This is your soulmate, Tahani.”

When Eleanor’s so-called soulmate walks in and honest-to-God poses in the doorway, she almost loses it right then and there. Michael has to be punking her. Her soulmate would never be this lame. (The only flaw in this theory is that Ashton Kutcher would never be in The Good Place.) But then she takes a real look at Tahani and suddenly she’s willing to let it go because whoa mama, that’s one hot lady.

Honestly, she’s a little surprised by it. Eleanor never believed in the concept of soulmates – it’s not like her parents gave her any reason to, and it always seemed like hokey B.S. designed to sell those matching heart necklaces where one half says ‘soul’ and the other says ‘mate’ – but if she’d been forced to guess who her soulmate would be, she’d have said “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, or some guy who kind of looks like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

This, though? She can work with this.

“Bring it in, man!”

Yeah, Eleanor definitely doesn’t hate this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eleanor hates this.

As it turns out, meeting Tahani Al-Jamil was the moment Eleanor’s afterlife went straight to hell. She may be tall and just improbably sexy like if the Empire State Building were personified and drawn by Rob Liefeld, but she’s also a monster. Not a cool, fun monster, like when everyone was all, ‘Eleanor, you’re a monster,’ after she crashed one of Sean Penn’s kid’s birthday parties and stole the cake. A real monster. The kind who holds tea parties.

It quickly becomes clear that she cannot tell this woman she doesn’t belong here. It complicates things, because she can’t let Tahani figure out she isn’t Heaven-material, but she really, really wants to put bleach in her shampoo. This ‘pretending to be nice’ thing blows.

It gets worse when Tahani decides they’re going to throw a ‘Welcome to the Neighborhood’ party.

“Not here, of course,” she says disdainfully, in that stupid, perfect British accent. Why does she still have that accent here? We get it, you’re British, Eleanor thinks. Go back to Downton Abbey. “I mean, this place is so… charming, what with the clowns and whatnot, but it’s simply too small to hold all the guests we’ll need to invite. It fits you perfectly, though, my—bite-size soulmate.” She smiles phonily. “But don’t worry, I’ve already procured a venue!”

“Uh-huh,” Eleanor says.

Tahani begins to talk about decorations. Eleanor wonders what would happen if someone killed themselves in the afterlife.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Yoy knuw whah,” Eleanor says, mouth full of delicious, delicious shrimp. They have put her in a remarkably better mood than she was five seconds ago. She swallows. “I retract my statement. This party is poppin’.”

Tahani grimaces. Whether it’s at Eleanor referring to her fancy soiree as poppin’ or at Eleanor talking with her mouth full, the world may never know. Eleanor would wager it’s probably both. She’s judgmental like that, or… so Eleanor assumes. She doesn’t actually know her that well beyond her pretentiousness and Britishness, but she’s just got a sense about it. Tahani? Definitely. Evil.

“Do try to leave enough for the guests. You wouldn’t want to pop out of that… adorably ridiculous dress. So chic, by the by – the ironically homely is all the rage right now, or so my close friend Jean Paul Gaultier has told me. I was his muse for many years, you know. I suppose there’s simply something about me that draws the attention of creative types, billionaires, world leaders…” Tahani says it with a smile, but Eleanor can tell she’s displeased with her. She grabs another shrimp and shoves the whole thing in her mouth without breaking eye contact.

So, that thing about not letting Tahani know she doesn’t belong isn’t going great.

There’s an awkward, passive-aggressive mood between them all night, but in the interest of keeping up appearances, Tahani keeps Eleanor at her side as she goes around the room to greet her guests. It’s exhausting. Everyone is basically a saint who died giving their kidneys to a newborn baby or got run over saving the last of a nearly-extinct species of animal. One of them spent all last summer building an orphanage in Nicaragua. And then there’s Eleanor, who spent all last summer watching Vanderpump Rules because she lost the remote and couldn’t change the channel. And then because she got kind of into it.

“Eleanor was a lawyer and human rights activist,” Tahani gushes, putting her hand on Eleanor’s arm. Eleanor forces the cheeriest smile she can manage. “Tell them about your trip to Ukraine!”

“Oh… I don’t like to. Brag. About myself.” She laughs. Fork you, Tahani.

“Please!” beg the couple they’re talking to. She thinks their names are Greg and Amelia? George and Emily? It doesn’t really matter. She’s nicknamed them Nose Hair and Garlic Breath. They look extremely interested in some stupid Ukraine trip she never even went on. She takes a deep breath.

“…And when I saw those conjoined twins eat borscht for the first time, I knew that I had done a. Good, good thing. Because I am definitely a good person. Like everyone here! I think we can all agree we are all great people.”

All three of them – Nose Hair, Garlic Breath, and Tahani – clap in amazement. Eleanor excuses herself to get a forking drink.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, by a drink, maybe she meant shots. And by shots, maybe she meant a lot of shots. By the time Tahani finds her again, she is drunk off her ash, and she’s cornered some monk dude who she’s pretty sure hasn’t said a single word. But that also might just be the shots.

“…Aaaand that’sh my ranking of the Kardashians,” she finishes, right as Tahani walks up. She holds a finger to her lips. “Shhhhh! Don’t tell Kylie!”

Weird Silent Monk Dude just stares back. He looks at Tahani. Then he leaves.

“Aw, maaan, you scared off my friend!” Eleanor whines. It was most certainly not her fault at all. “With yourrr… intimidating tallness. Your looming. Shtop looming over me!”

Tahani continues to stand there. Looming. Like some kind of idiot.

“Eleanor, you are—highly intoxicated. At an evening soiree! Decorum would state that one should be tipsy at the most.”

“Eleanoah, you ahhh hiiighly intoxicated,” Eleanor mocks.

“I think perhaps it would be best if you returned home. Trust me, you do not want to pull a ‘Joaquin Phoenix at the 2012 winter gala’. The tabloids were talking about it for hours until Kristen Stewart was photographed going to pilates!”

Eleanor pokes her in the shoulder. It loses some of its effect due to the fact that she has to reach up so high to do it. God, she hates how tall Tahani is. Just be shorter. “Newp. I’mma… Walking Penis all over yo’ face.”

“Joaquin Phoenix.”

“Juan King Felix.”

“No—”

“You know what I meant! Soooo, if you’ll excushe me, mama’s gonna go have some more shots.” Eleanor takes a step, then stops. “And I’m not gonna leave any shrimp for the guests.”

Tahani gasps. “You daren’t.”

“Oh, I dare’dstve.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eleanor gets home somehow. Judging by the fact that Tahani is forcing her into bed when she realizes where she is, Tahani’s probably the one who got her home. Probably because she was embarrassing her. She wouldn’t do it just to be nice. Not to someone like Eleanor, who’s so clearly beneath her, beneath everyone here.

As Tahani roots through Eleanor’s pajama drawer, she says, “They must have made a mistake. This sleepwear selection is clearly for a man. A very small, poorly-dressed man.”

Eleanor drunkenly snorts. “God, you are the Kylie Jenner of soulmates.”

“Is that good?” Tahani asks, and maybe it’s just the Everclear talking, but she honestly looks like she wants Eleanor to say yes. Does she just have to be good at everything, even soulmating? Too bad; she’s not. (Maybe she would be if she got matched with someone who actually belonged here.)

“Ask the hot monk.” She pauses, then laughs. “The hunk. Get it?”

Tahani eventually picks out a T-shirt and flannel pajama pants for her to wear, although it clearly pains her to do so. She turns around while Eleanor changes, although she makes it seem like it’s because she doesn’t want to see it, not out of politeness. It’s vaguely offensive. She’s no sexy Empire State Building, but come on.

“Were you really on a human rights mission in Ukraine?” Tahani asks afterwards. Eleanor’s heart stops. She supposes she hasn’t been doing a very good job of blending in, at least not around Tahani. There’s just something about her that makes her feel so inferior, insecure, angry. She wants to lash out because of it.

“No, Tahani, I was at Ukrainian Disneyland. Ya got me.” Eleanor makes sure to seem appropriately offended that her Good Person Cred is being challenged. “I totally helped all those people! Just becaushe I’m not fancy like you doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. We didn’t all have puhhh-fect lives, okay.”

Tahani bristles. “I never claimed my life was perfect—”

“You said the Queen told you that you were the daughter she wished she had.”

“Well, yes—”

“And that you gave Steve Jobs the idea for iPhones.”

“I can see how you’d think—”

“And that you dated half of the Avengers! Come on, dude!”

Tahani pauses. It stretches on for a bit. Eleanor thinks she might actually feel cowed. Finally, she says, “It was two-thirds, actually.”

Eleanor throws her hands up and covers her head with her pillow.


	2. Chapter 2

Tahani has her own space off the kitchen, thank _heavens_ , so she doesn’t have to sleep next to a drunken Eleanor mumbling about which Real Housewife would survive in a zombie apocalypse situation. The unfortunate part is that her space is still part of this teeny, tiny clown house. She’s trying so very hard to love it, because this is The Good Place and everything is meant to be perfect and what would complaining make her? She sees their neighbors, though, with their opulent mansions, and wonders what she did in life that didn’t earn her such a reward.

She opens her drawer to find silk and satin matching sleepwear sets, a stark contrast to the absolute mess in Eleanor’s drawer. Not for the first time, she wonders how two diametrically opposed people could possibly be soulmates. Tahani has met Malala Yousafzai, for crying out loud. Eleanor would probably think Malala was a type of food. How absolutely _boorish_ of her to hypothetically do that.

Tahani slips into her sleepwear set and crawls into her bed. It feels too small. She’s almost certain it’s smaller than Eleanor’s, which is just adding insult to injury, at this point. When her head hits the pillow, she dreams of Kamilah in big, big houses where all the doors are locked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The newspaper that lands itself on the clown house’s doorstep that morning is positively nonsensical. Tahani had picked it up in the hopes of familiarizing herself with the current events of the neighborhood – and perhaps scoping out who the most important neighbors who will be – but she finds herself staring at it now, eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Last night I had cereal with milk for the first time? _Life changing?_ ” What sort of editor must this paper have that things like this get through? Her good friend, Dean Baquet, current executive editor of the New York Times, would never let such a thing happen.

Eleanor, who’d previously shown no interest in the paper – _I get my news on the streets, baby_ , she’d said, and Tahani still isn’t sure if she was joking or not – perks up and makes her way from the couch to the kitchen table where Tahani’s sitting, peering over her shoulder. Tahani can hear her whispering the drivel to herself as she reads it before she suddenly goes completely silent. Against her better judgment, Tahani is worried she’s had some sort of cardiac arrest, but when she turns to look at her, Eleanor’s jaw has dropped.

“That’s no newspaper, Tahani,” she says. “That’s Kylie Jenner’s Twitter feed.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

It rains borscht that afternoon. Tahani spends the next hour scrubbing it out of her hair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the emergency neighborhood meeting, Tahani notices that George’s nose hair has grown exponentially over the night. It’s—disturbing. When she speaks to Emily, the smell of garlic wafting from her breath is so overwhelming she nearly asks Janet for her fainting couch right then and there. That would be rude, of course, so she doesn’t. She goes outside, and _then_ she asks Janet for her fainting couch, like a _lady_.

Michael finds her there after the meeting is over, sprawled out like a Victorian lady who’s just been told bonnets are no longer in style. “Tahani? Are you all right?” he asks kindly, and she’s almost taken aback because that’s the first time she’s been asked that in so long.

She’s not sure quite what it is, but something about Michael makes him so likable. Makes her want _him_ to like her, too. Perhaps it’s the bowties. People do seem to be fond of a white man in a bowtie. Whatever it is, she doesn’t want him to think she’s being a poor sport, so she sits up. “Oh, of course! Of course. I was just—thinking of ways to fix this issue! I do all my best brainstorming… horizontally, you see.” She cringes internally.

“That’s too kind of you,” he says, and she practically beams with pride. “But where’s Eleanor? I’m sure you could do with a sounding board.” Her smile falls.

“Oh, Eleanor.” The way Eleanor’s name feels in her mouth is unpleasant, like the oysters she had at Blake Lively’s garden party in 2016. It shouldn’t be this way, should it? It should be perfect. Everything is finally supposed to be perfect, and even now— “Michael, would you mind if I… inquired about an aspect of the neighborhood?”

“It’s your soulmate, isn’t it?”

Tahani pauses, taken aback. How does he know? Could he just sense that she wasn’t cut out for this? A small sense of shame creeps into her stomach. “Well… I don’t mean to question your methods. It’s just that Eleanor is so very small and loud and… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she’s quite female.”

Nothing she says appears to faze Michael at all. What she would give for that level of assurance in life. “Oh, Tahani.” For a moment, she could swear there’s a mischievous look in his eye, but then it’s gone. “You just don’t know all her good qualities. Did you know she’s the top points-getter in the neighborhood?” He laughs. “She got _so_ many more points than even you.”

“Did she,” Tahani says through gritted teeth. _How._

 He puts a warm hand on her shoulder. “It’s not uncommon to have an… adjustment period.” He waves his hand. “Some pairs take months, even years, before they’ve settled into their new life.”

“ _Years?_ ” she asks, and the look on her face must be _devastated_ , because Michael squeezes her shoulder.

“Compared to eternity, I’d say it’s a steal. Wouldn’t you, Tahani?” He smiles his winning smile.

She looks around them at the various couples milling about the square, each getting on swimmingly if their irritatingly saccharine smiles are any indication. It doesn’t _seem_ common to clash with your soulmate; it seems like it’s only a Tahani problem.  Years seem like a very long time to suffer when she’s already spent her entire life singled out, but Michael is looking at her with such a confident smile that she feels she has no option but to agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I thought we might bond today, my… Lilliputian chum,” Tahani says, trying very hard to sound friendly. She is not going to fail at something in Heaven. She has a limit, and that is it. Besides, if Michael’s right and Eleanor really is the top points-getter, then clearly they have more in common than she thought.

She really hates that Eleanor is the top points-getter.

“Um, your who-what-now.” Eleanor shoots her something that can only be called a capital-L Look from her bed. It must be 11 A.M. by now, and she still hasn’t dragged herself out of bed. Sleeping in late _has_ to shave _some_ points off your score, doesn’t it?

“Irrelevant literary reference,” Tahani says, already feeling disappointed in the interaction. “Anyway, I realized we hadn’t yet spent much time together despite our soulmate status, which was – of course – entirely unintentional on my part, and I’m sure yours as well…”

“Yeah,” Eleanor says unconvincingly.

“I thought perhaps we could greet the neighbors we hadn’t met yet together, or perhaps visit the French café. I do _adore_ France. Or I suppose we could peruse the bookstore, to avoid future literary ignorance.” All right, that one’s passive aggressive and she knows it.

Eleanor finally drags herself out of bed. She’s wearing red flannel pants that remind Tahani of a lumberjack. “Look, dude. Obviously, we both know we’re not—” She pauses. “Ooh.” Tahani furrows her brow. “Okay. We _should_ be soulmates.”

Tahani frowns. “We _are_ soulmates.” She might not sound entirely sure of this herself, but she trusts Michael. This is the afterlife and he’s a higher power. He has to know something she doesn’t.

“ _Right_ ,” Eleanor replies, winking confusingly and clicking her tongue. For a brief moment, Tahani goes back on her previous sentiment. Michael’s clearly wrong—no, no, he has infinite knowledge, and she must trust him. “Okay. You want a date? Let’s go on a date.”

Tahani scoffs, like Eleanor has just accused her of something. “That is decidedly _not_ what I said. I simply… wanted to spend time with you in a one-on-one setting to determine our compatibility as soulmates—”

Eleanor raises her eyebrows.

“It is not a date,” Tahani says firmly. She only goes on dates with Kennedy-tier or higher. Eleanor does not fit that criteria.

“All right, jeez. Thanks for the ego boost.” Eleanor raises her hands, offended. “Fine. Let’s go on a _one-on-one bonding sesh._ Better?”

Tahani sniffs. “I suppose it will have to do.”

Eleanor crosses her arms, looking at Tahani appraisingly. Tahani suddenly feels very self-conscious under her gaze, which is ridiculous, because she’s wearing a piece from the latest Coco Chanel collection and Eleanor just rolled out of bed and has a little piece of dried drool in the corner of her mouth.

“If we’re gonna do this, I’ve got a couple changes to make first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stay tuned for a DATE, and also the introduction of ya boi chidi

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "problems" by mother mother, a very good song.


End file.
